And having done so, she thought that she should have eaten in her own room instead.

It was not that anyone was hostile - even the inn-keeper, seeing the black braids coiled around Shanna's head when she took off the steel cap she wore, had betrayed only by a widening of the eyes his wonder at seeing a woman armed and traveling as a man. Perhaps he thought her one of the Emperor's Valkyr guards, though she was really too dark and too thin. But mostly, he seemed too dispirited to care.

Shanna poked at the fat congealing in the bowl of barley stew and glanced around her. There were perhaps a dozen other people in the long room, sitting alone or in groups of two or three with large spaces between. The chamber was not unattractive, with striped cloths nailed over the plaster and racks of painted Essseyn ware -- so why was there no singing, no laughter?"

She suppressed an impulse to ask her nearest neighbor, an old fellow in a drover's cap who was dozing against the wall. Perhaps they were worried about the drought, or maybe it was just the way of the place. Better to hold her peace; in the morning she would be gone.

There was a commotion at the entry and Shanna turned, noting the sharp sound of indignation in the voices there, or was it fear? She caught something about troops from the garrison at Kama ... she strained to hear, but the words faded to a mumble and the door closed. The innkeeper came back into the common room and a man in a shopkeeper's embroidered gown asked a question.

"I don't know--" the host replied. "We asked for someone to help us, but can soldiers make it rain, or frighten away the Blood Dancer?"

"Ssh!" The other man made the Sign against Evil and the innkeeper shrugged, then paled as the man at the table near Shanna suddenly sat bolt upright and began to cough. In the firelight she saw his cheeks flush crimson as an actor's paint.

The other men saw, and stumbled to their feet, blessing themselves, reaching for cloaks and bags. "Blood Sign!" someone echoed the innkeeper. "Get him away!"

But the host was already scurrying, and as the drover slumped he grabbed him beneath the armpits and began to drag him toward the door.

"Wait!" Shanna found herself on her feet, going after him. "What are you doing? Can't you see the man's ill?"

Face averted, the innkeeper thrust the big door open with one hand and tumbled the limp body of his guest into the road. Trembling, with a face like dough, he turned to answer her.

"Ill! Where have you come from, that you don't recognize the plague?" He looked down at his hands and rubbed them against his apron as if to wipe off the contagion. "Gan! Tami!" he called to the kitchens. "Get that table outside and burn it, and the trencher he was using, too!" The other guests still huddled in the common room, afraid to stay there, more afraid to go past the thing that lay outside the front door.

"But you can't just leave him to die in the road!" exclaimed Shanna. "Is there no pest-house? Are there no healers in this town?"

"The Moonmothers have set up a hospice down by the square, for all the good it does anyone. So long as he doesn't do it in my house, the man can die as well in the road as anywhere! The gods have cursed us!" The innkeeper began to rub his hands against his sides again. "No one will come here now! What will I do?"

"Down by the square, you say?" Shanna pushed past him. "If the gods are angry, you will die no matter what you do--" she said over her shoulder. "You may as well try to act like a human being while you live!" She strode down the broad steps and bent to lift the drover, who was retching redly into the road.

"You're dooming yourself, you know--" the innkeeper began again. "What do you want done with your mare and that bird you've got up in your room? Don't think I'll let you through my door again, not after you touched him...."